On the morning after his arrival the visitor, making his appearance at
an early hour, had a short conversation with Mr. Gateward, whom he found
at the horse-yard sending out his men for the day. 'Of course I know
nothing of this sort of thing,' he said; 'but I have come here to learn,
with a view to investing a few thousands I have in a property, or
station, as I think you call it. Now understand clearly that I shall be
glad to help in the work of the place, in any way that I am fitted for.
I can ride and drive decently, shoot, walk, keep accounts; in a general
way do most things that other people can. Of course I can't pick up the
whole drill at once, but I don't want you to spare me. I came to
Australia to work, and the sooner I learn the better.'
'All right, sir,' replied the bronzed veteran, 'I'll see what I can do.
If you ride about with me every day, and keep your eyes open, you'll
pick up as much in six months as most of the people know that own
stations. It's a bad year now, and we're all in the doldrums, as the
sailors say. But it's not going to be that way always. The wind'll
change or the rain'll come, and then we'll be able to show you what
Corindah looks like in a good season.'
'Then we understand each other. I'll take my orders from you, but, of
course, from no one else--('Not likely,' interjected Mr. Gateward,
looking at the steady eye and short, proud upper lip of the
speaker)--'and early or late, wet or dry (if it ever _is_ wet here), hot
or cold, you'll find me ready and willing. Give me a couple of good
hacks, and I'll soon have an idea of how you carry on the war.'
'I'm dashed sure you will, sir, and I shall be proud to help a gentleman
like you to a knowledge of things, that's willing to learn, and not too
proud to take a hint.'
'Quite so. I suppose you remember my cousin Brian? I was very young when
he left home, but I always heard that he was a hard man to beat at
anything he chose to go in for.'
'He was as fine a man as ever wore shoe-leather,' said the overseer.
'Everybody respected him in these parts, and he was that jolly and kind
in his ways, nobody could help liking him. If he hadn't been cut off in
his prime by that infernal Doctor--the cattle-duffing, horse-stealing
hound--he'd have been one of the richest men in the district this very
minute.'
'He was shot by a highway robber?' inquired Devereux; 'what you call a
bushranger in Australia, don't you?'
'Well, there are bushrangers and bushrangers,' said the overseer. 'This
chap, the Doctor, hadn't regularly took to the bush, as one might say,
though he was worse than many as did. He belonged to a mob of
cattle-stealers that used to duff cattle in the back country, and pass
them over to Queensland. Well, Mr. Tracknell, one of the squatters in
the back blocks, began to run 'em pretty close, and put the police on
'em. They heard he was to be in the coach from Orange on a certain day,
and made it right to stick it up and give him a lesson.'
'What's sticking up?'
'Well, sir, by what one hears and reads, it is what used to be called
"stopping" on the Queen's highway in England.'
'Then they had no grudge against Brian Devereux?'
'Not a bit in the world. He was known far and wide as a free-handed
gentleman. Any one was welcome to stop at Corindah in his time, and no
poor man ever went away hungry. The man the Doctor and Bill Bond wanted
wasn't in the coach as it happened. He'd got wind of it and cleared. But
they heard there was a gentleman with a big beard going down the
country, and made sure it was him. When they came up and saw their
mistake, they'd have rode off again, only the Captain was that
hot-tempered and angry at their stopping him, that he fired on them, and
nearly collared the lot. They returned it, and rode off as well as they
could, and never knew till days after that they had hit him. Them as
told me said the Doctor was devilish sorry for it, and that he was the
last man in the district they'd have hurt.'
'What became of the Doctor, as you call him?'
'Well, sir, he's in the back country somewhere in Queensland yet, I
believe. He served a sentence for horse-stealing of seven years; but
he's wanted again, and there's a warrant out for him. He's a desperate
man now, and I wouldn't be sure he won't do something that'll be talked
about yet before his end comes.'
'It's to be hoped there'll be a rope round his neck on that day,' said
Bertram; 'scoundrels of that kind should be trapped or poisoned like
vermin.'
'Well, sir, the Doctor's no chop, but there's worse than Bill Bond, if
you'll believe me. The only thing is, now he's hunted from pillar to
post so, and he ain't got half a chance to repent if he wanted ever so
much, I'm afraid he'll do something out of the way bad yet.'
* * * * *
The autumnal season, with calm sun-gilded days, cool starlight,
unclouded nights, and mornings fresh and exhilarating, as if newly
ordered from Paradise, came gradually to an end. Lovely, passing fair,
as weather in the abstract; but dry, dry, always dry, and as such
lamentable and injurious. Then winter made believe to arrive with the
first week in June. But how could it be winter, Bertram thought, when
the skies were still cloudless and untroubled, the mid-day warm, the
plains dusty, the air soft, the river low; when the flowers in the
garden bloomed and budded as usual; when no leaf fell from the forest;
when, save the great acacias in the backyard and the white cedars in the
garden, all the trees at Corindah were green and full-foliaged? The
chief difference was that the nights were longer, cooler. There were
sharp frosts from time to time; and when Bertram arose early in the
morning, according to his wont, all things were covered with an icy
mantle. On one occasion, when he met Mr. Gateward coming in from a long
night ride, his abundant beard was frozen stiff as a stalactite.
The sheep died faster than ever, at which Bertram wondered much, but did
not ask questions. 'Everything comes to him who waits,' was one of his
favourite proverbs.
'If it had been always thus,' he told himself, 'so many evidences of
capital and prosperity would not be here. A change will come sometime,
but I cannot hasten it by ignorant questions. I shall learn all about
this extraordinary country in the course of time.'
His theory was sound. But Mrs. Devereux was neither so self-contained
nor philosophical. She complained and bemoaned herself from time to
time, as is the way of women. At the evening meal, when after the day's
duties the two young people and herself met with an affectation of
social enjoyment, she made many things plain to the inquiring mind of
Bertram Devereux, silent and incurious as he seemed to be.
'It had not always been thus. In the old, happy days droughts had
certainly occurred, but with intervals of years between. Now the seasons
seemed to have changed. The year before last was a drought, and
now--this was the most sore and terrible grass famine she had ever
remembered. Their losses would be frightful, disastrous, ruinous.'
'Was it on the cards that she would be actually ruined--lose all her
property, that is--if the season remained unchanged?'
'Well, not absolutely. She could not truthfully say that. Even if all
the sheep on Corindah died, the whole fifty thousand, the land and
fences would remain. But twenty or thirty thousand pounds would be an
immense sum to make up. The very thought made her shudder. To think of
the years it had taken to make and save it! No doubt she could get more
sheep. Her credit, she was thankful to say, was good enough for that.'
'I believe it's all Mr. Gateward's fault, said Pollie impetuously. 'Why
did he persuade you not to buy a station in the mountains last year,
where there's beautiful green grass and running water in the driest
summer. That's what is needed for the poor sheep now. And all for a
thousand pounds.'
'A thousand pounds is a great deal of money,' said Mrs. Devereux. 'He
thought he could get some country cheaper, and in the meantime it was
snapped up. I have been sorry for it ever since. But he meant well, as
he always does.'
'I know that. He's as good an old creature as ever lived, and devoted to
you and me, mother. I wouldn't say a word against him for the world. But
he's too slow and cautious in matters like this, which need decision.
Think of all the poor weak sheep, with their imploring eyes, that would
have been kept alive if we had sent twenty or thirty thousand up to
those lovely mountains.'
'I suppose it's too late now,' said Bertram. 'Of course I know nothing
as yet, but could not some of them--ten thousand or so--be taken away
now?'
'That's where the misery is,' said Pollie. 'The snow has fallen on the
mountains. Indeed, nearly all the sheep have come away. Those thirty
thousand of Mr. Haller's that passed here last week, and gave you so
much trouble, had just come from there. And how nice and strong they
were, do you remember? Our poor things are so weak that they couldn't
travel if we had ever so much green grass to send them to.'
'It's Napoleon's Russian campaign over again--only, that our country's
too dry to hold us, and his was too cold. And is there no return from
Elba?'
'When the rain comes, not before. It may come soon, in a few months,
this year, next year, not at all. So we're in a pleasing state of
uncertainty, don't you think?'
'And you are not all sitting in sackcloth and ashes, or fasting, or
making vows to the saints, and what not! This is a wonderful country,
and you are wonderful people, I must say, to take matters so calmly.'
'We know our country and the general course of the seasons,' said Mrs.
Devereux. 'In the long-run they prove favourable, though the exceptional
years are hard. And we strive to have faith in God's providence,
believing that whoso trusts in Him will not be left desolate.'
Letter from Miss M. A. Devereux to Miss Clara Thornton, Fairoaks,
Edgecliffe, Sydney:--
MY DARLING CLARA--I hope you think of me daily, nightly, at
breakfast and lunch time; also at midnight, when you can look
out of your bedroom window, and see that lovely South Head
beacon-light and the star-showers gleaming on the wavelets of
the bay; when you can inhale the strong sweet ocean breath, and
dream of far-away tropic isles and palm groves, coral reefs,
pirates too, and all the delightful denizens of the world of
romance. How you ought to pity me, shut up in poor, dry, dusty
Corindah!--the weather going from bad to worse; Mother and Mr.
Gateward looking more woebegone every day; and the poor sheep
dying at such a rate that even as we sit in the house odours
are wafted towards us not exactly of Araby the Blest. Bertie
calls it '_bouquet de merino_.'
Who is Bertie? Did I not tell you before? He is the English
cousin that has come to live with us and learn how to make a
fortune by keeping sheep in Australia. 'What is he like?' of
course you ask. Well, he is _not_ a great many things. So he is
not a hero of romance, ready made for the consolation of your
poor friend in this famine year. He is not handsome, nor tall,
nor clever--that is, brilliantly so. Not a particular admirer
of his poor Australian cousin either. He is very cool and
undemonstrative; lets you find out his talents and strong
points by degrees, accidentally, as it were. If I were to
describe him more accurately than in any other way that occurs
to me, I should say he is different from everybody else I have
ever seen in this colony--extremely well able to take care of
himself under all circumstances, and quite careless as to the
effect he produces.
He is very well educated--cultured, I might say; reads and
speaks French and German. So, as we have absolutely nothing to
do in the evenings, he reads with me, and I get on a great deal
faster than any of us did at Miss Watchtower's. You know I have
always had a passion for what is called 'seeing the world'; it
seems to be born in me, and I can recollect when I was quite a
little thing being far more interested in books of travel than
any other reading. I really believe that if anything led to the
station being sold, and we have any money left after these
frightful droughts, that I should persuade mother to take me
'home,' as we Australians always say, and then have a good,
satisfactory, leisurely prowl over Europe. Now, do you see what
I am coming to? What is the use of seeing everything in dumb
show? I intend to work hard, very hard, at languages now I have
the chance. Then I shall be able to enjoy life and instruct my
mind fully when I do go abroad. Abroad! Rome, Paris, Florence!
The idea is too ecstatic altogether. I shall die if it is not
realised. I feel as if I should die of joy if it is.
I am writing at my little table in my bedroom. As I look out
the moonlight makes everything as clear as day. There is a
slight breeze, and I can actually see the dust as it rises on
the plain, midwinter though it is supposed to be. I couldn't
live here all my life, now could I? Not for all the cattle and
sheep in Australia! I don't feel inclined to go to bed. But I
suppose I must say good-night to my dearest Clara, and remain
your too lonely friend,
POLLIE.
After the first month or two of the excitement caused by the arrival of
a 'new chum' at Corindah on the experience ticket, as the vernacular of
the West Logan had it, much of the mingled curiosity, doubt, or
disapproval with which the emigrant gentleman is usually regarded in a
distant provincial circle died away. Of this last attribute of the
neophyte Mr. Devereux had incurred but little. Studiously careful of
speech, habitually courteous in bearing, and wholly indifferent to
general opinion, but few men of those with whom he was brought into
contact could find anything upon which to found depreciatory opinion.
The utmost that professional carpers and cynics could aver amounted
merely to an inability to 'make him out,' as they phrased it, coupled
with a lurking suspicion that he 'thought himself a deuced deal too good
for the district of West Logan and the people that belonged to it.'
'Confound him!' said Bob Barker, who posed as a leading society man and
_arbiter elegantiarum_, 'what right has he to come here and look down on
the lot of us as if we were small farmers or country bumpkins? Suppose
he _was_ in the Guards, there's nothing so wonderful about that. I know
his mother was a lady in her own right, but a gentleman is only a
gentleman, and other people have relatives in the aristocracy as well as
him.'
Here Bob twisted his moustache and looked proudly around the
company--squatters, magistrates, and others, a select party of whom,
this being Court-day at Wannonbah, had assembled in the parlour of the
principal hotel.
'Are you quite sure that he does look down, as you call it, upon all of
us fellows, Barker, or did you only think it was ten to one he would?'
said one of the assembled magistrates, a native-born Australian, with a
slow, monotonous intonation which did injustice to a shrewd intellect
and keen sense of humour. 'You know we _are_ rather rusty, some of us.
We've been so long away from England.' Here the speaker bestowed a wink
of preternatural subtlety upon a good-humoured looking, middle-aged man
who occupied the chair at the head of the table.
'Rusty be hanged!' said Mr. Barker. 'I could go home and take my
position in society to-morrow as if I had never left. I don't want any
young military puppy to teach _me_ manners.'
'But what--did--he--do, Barker?' inquired the other squatter;
'or--what--did--he--say--that--put--your--monkey--up?'
'Well, of course he didn't do anything, and as for saying, he was
infernally polite; but somehow I knew by the quiet, simple way he spoke
what he was thinking of. And then, when we were playing whist,
Atherstone and I with Miss Devereux and the old lady, he looked on until
I asked if he was approved of our play. He smiled faintly, and then
begged to know whether "out here" we were always in the habit of leading
from our longest suits? I could have kicked him on the spot.'
'But--perhaps--he--only--wanted--to--know,' pursued his tormentor, who
now appeared honestly desirous of extracting information.
'You're--so--very--smart--Barker, yourself--you--know.'
'Oh, I dropped down to him,' said Barker. 'They've got some confounded
new-fangled way of calling for trumps in these London clubs, and of
course, like all English people, he thinks we never hear anything or
read anything, and have never seen any society men for a century but
himself. Why, wasn't General Burstall here the other day on leave from
India? Saw my brother at Simla just the week he left. However, wait till
this season's over. That'll take some of the starch out of him.'
'It'll--take--the--starch--out--of--some--of--us--too,'
replied the first speaker, 'if--it--doesn't--break--up--soon.
I've--lost--six--thousand--pounds--worth--of--cattle--already.
Everybody--says--your--frontage--looks--frightful--Bar--ker--eh?'
The intense gravity and slow solemnity with which this sudden assault
was performed upon Mr. Barker, impugning the character of his run, and
by implication his probable solvency, appeared so overpoweringly
ludicrous to the company, that a diversion was effected in favour of Mr.
Barker's pasturage, who therefore permitted the personal questions to
lapse.
Letter from Bertram Devereux to Captain Goodwood, 6th Dragoon Guards:--
CORINDAH, NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA, _June 1877_.
_My dear Charlie_--Partly on account of a weak promise to let
you and one or two more of the old set into the secrets of my
other-world life when I said good-bye after that fatal Derby
that proved such a smasher, partly because one has such
enormous quantities of spare time in the desert here, I am
going to produce a respectable despatch--may even go the length
of becoming a regular correspondent--while quartered here.
My jottings down, apart from any personal interest which may
yet survive the writer's departure, ought to possess a certain
value as tidings from a far country--descriptions of a mode of
life and state of society of which no one I ever met in England
had the faintest idea. It is odd, too, for how many youngsters
from good families that we know have emigrated within the last
ten years! And with one or two exceptions there was no gleaning
any information from their friends. Either the fellows didn't
write or had done indifferently, and so the less said the
better, or else the friends hardly could tell whether they
lived in Victoria, Western Australia, New South Wales, or
Tasmania, which is much as if the whereabouts of a continental
traveller should be described as indifferently as in Belgium,
Berlin, Switzerland, or Sicily. There is a want of exactitude
about our countrymen, I must say, in all matters that do not
concern their own immediate interests, most painful to persons
gifted with a love of method--like you and me, for instance. No
wonder we English are always caught unprepared when we go to
war, and get laughed at all over Europe--till we begin to
fight, that is. The reaction sets in then.
However, _revenons a nos moutons_--a strictly appropriate tag,
inasmuch as this lodge in the wilderness is surrounded by
enormous estates, leasehold, not freehold, by the way, all
devoted to the production of the merino variety of the ovine
family. Millions of them are bred in these great solitudes. In
favourable years I gather that one is enabled to export about
one-half to a fourth of their value, in the shape of wool. This
brings a good price, is as negotiable as gold, and the fortunes
of the returned colonists that we used to see in London society
are thus compiled. Of course there are details, the which I am
setting my mind to master. But they would hardly interest you.
One trifling fact I may mention, lest you may imagine the
progress of fortune-constructing too ridiculously easy. It is,
that there has been next to no rain for more than a year,
strange, almost incredible, as it may seem to you of the rainy
isles. In consequence, the country looks like a desert, and
tens of thousands of sheep are dying here, and for hundreds of
miles in every direction. Occurrences of this kind, you will
understand, delay indefinitely and perhaps wholly frustrate
one's too obvious purpose of gathering a competency and
hurrying out of the strange country as fast as may be.
'All this is very well,' I hear you say; 'but what about the
social system? Why doesn't he tell me about _her_?--for of
course there is a woman somewhere within the orbit of his
existence. Wonder what they're like out there. Must be some, I
suppose.'
With your usual acuteness, which I have rarely known at fault,
unless confronted by a plain unvarnished robbery like the doing
to death of the favourite (and very nearly the backers) in our
fatal year, you have hit the gold.
Well, somehow or other, there _is_ a she. How strange it seems
that one's life, whether
'Pone me pigris ubi nulla campis
Arbor aestiva recreatur aura,' etc.,
or in the midst of cities, or even in the comparatively assured
and fortified privacy of a messroom, should never be wholly
free from the invasion of womankind. A book, a photograph, a
souvenir of the slightest kind, is sufficient to arouse the
tempestuous motives of those who are doomed to be 'the prey of
the gods' in this peculiar fashion. How much more so the
perfect human form, 'ripe and real,' when it comes before your
eyes in all the unconscious temptation of virgin youth and
beauty scarce unfolded morning, noon, and night. Add to this
that I'm at present _habitans in sicco_, and you will conclude,
with the swift logical subtlety so proverbially yours, that as
a latter-day hermit I may compare favourably with St. Anthony.
Heaven knows I did not rush into danger. Languid and prostrated
as I was after the overthrow of all my worldly hopes; worn and
despairing when the one devouring, passionate love of my life
had disappeared, and it was like the last scene of a tragedy,
when nothing is left for the spectators but to wrap their
cloaks around them and go home--I deemed that I was coming to a
land where there were no women, except black ones or those
required for culinary purposes.
How little we know of these new lands and their inhabitants,
all English as they are, as if in the Midland Counties, yet of
manner strangely fresh! All is high development and new
material. How I am shut up with a magnificent young creature,
with a face like Egeria, and a figure like the huntress maid,
burning with enthusiasm, talented, cultured, full of all noble
feminine attributes; dangerous with the fascinations of fresh,
innocent womanhood, yet ignorant of the ways of the world, and
childlike in her unsuspicious confidence!
How I wish I was young again! I do really, Charlie. Could I but
blot out the years that have intervened--not so many--but what
Dead-Sea fruits have I not tasted during their stormy course?
What a burnt-out volcano is this heart of mine! Could I but
recall the past and be like one of our schoolboy heroes!
'The happy page who was the lord
Of one soft heart and his own sword.'
What empires and kingdoms would I give--supposing them to be
mine--to revert to that position, and so prove myself worthy of
the fresh heart, the petals of which are about to open before
my graduated advance, like a rose in June! That I shall be the
favoured suitor, despite of the opposition of a good-looking,
stalwart, provincial rival, my experience assures me. With
women _l'inconnu_ is always the interesting, the romantic, the
irresistible. In despite of myself, I can see clearly my future
position of _jeune premier_ in this opera of the wilderness. It
might be worse, you will say. That I grant. But you know that
Helen of Troy would never control this restless, wayward heart
of mine in perpetuity.
For the rest, the life is bearable enough, free, untrammelled,
novel, with a tinge of adventure. My days are spent in the
saddle. There's just a hint of shooting, no hunting, no
fishing. We dress for dinner, and live much as at a
shooting-lodge in the Highlands, with stock-riders for gillies.
So we are not altogether barbarous, as you others imagine. This
letter is far too long, and imprudently confiding, so I hasten
to subscribe myself yours, as of old,
BERTRAM DEVEREUX.
So much for the impression Pollie was capable of producing on a worn,
world-weary heart.
It was a strange fate which had thus imprisoned this beautiful creature,
so richly endowed with all the attributes which combine to form the
restless, tameless, unsatisfied man, amid surroundings so uninteresting
and changeless. Eager for adventure, even for danger, she was curious
with a child's hungering, insatiable appetite for the knowledge of
wondrous lands, cities, peoples; hating the daily monotone to which the
woman's household duties are necessarily attuned. Capable of the
strongest, the most passionate attachments, yet all-ignorant as yet of
the subtle, sweet, o'ermastering tone of the world-conquering harmony of
love. In the position to which she appeared immovably attached by
circumstance, she seemed like a strayed bright-plumaged bird, a foreign
captive, taken in infancy and reared in an alien land.
A chamois in a sheepfold, a leopardess in a drawing-room, a red deer in
a trim and close-paled enclosure, could not have been more hopelessly at
war with surroundings, more incongruously provided with food and
shelter. Day after day a growing discontent, a hopeless despair of life,
seemed to weigh her down, to take the savour from existence, to restrain
the instinctive sportiveness of youth, to hush the spirit-song of praise
with which, like the awakening bird, she should have welcomed each
dawning morn.
'Why must it be thus?' she often asked herself when, restless at
midnight as at noon-day, she gazed from her window across the wide
star-lit plain, in which groups of melancholy, swaying, pale-hued trees
seemed to be whispering secrets of past famine years or sighing weirdly
over sorrows to come.
'Will it always be thus?' thought she, 'and is my life to trickle slowly
along like the course of our enfeebled stream, until after long
assimilation to this desert dreariness I become like one of the
house-mothers I see around me? Ignorant, incurious, narrow, with an
intelligence gradually shrivelling up to the dimensions of a childhood
with which they have nothing else in common! What a hateful prospect!
What a death in life to look forward to! Were it not for my darling
mother and the few friends I may call my own, I feel as if I could put
an end to an existence which has so little to recommend it, so pitiably
small an outlook.'
In all this outburst of capricious discontent the experienced reader of
the world's page will perceive nothing more than the instinctive,
unwarranted impatience of youth, which in man or woman is so utterly
devoid of reason or gratitude.
What! does not the vast, calm universe wait and watch, weak railer at
destiny, for the completion of 'Nature's wondrous plan,' counting not
the years, the aeons, as the sands of the sea, that intervene between
promise and fulfilment? Hast thou not enjoyed ease, love unwearying,
anxious tendance, from the dawn of thy helpless, as yet useless being;
and while all creation suffers and travails, canst thou not endure the
unfolding of thy fated lot?
Applying, possibly, some such remedies to her mental ailment, life
appeared to go on at Corindah much as it had done, Pollie thought, since
the earliest days she could remember as a tiny girl. She could almost
have supposed that the same things had been said by the same people, or
people very like them, since her babyhood. Wonderings whether it would
rain soon, by the mildly expectant; doubts whether it would ever rain
again, by the scoffers and unbelievers; assertions that the seasons had
changed, by the prophets of evil; superficial, sanguine predictions that
it would rain some day, by the light-minded; hope and trusting
confidence in the Great Ruler, by the devout, that He would not suffer
his people to be utterly cast down and forsaken, that the dumb creatures
of His hand would have a bound set to their sufferings--all these things
had she heard and experienced from time to time ever since she could
recall herself as a conscious entity. Then after a less or greater
interval the blessed rain of heaven would fall, plenteously,
excessively, perhaps superfluously, without warning, without limit, and
the long agony of the drought would be over.
Something of this sort had Pollie been saying to her cousin, as they sat
at breakfast one gusty, unsettled, red-clouded morning. He had been
inquiring satirically whether it ever rained at Corindah.
'He had been here six months and had never seen any. Would all the sheep
die? Would all the watercourses dry up? Would they all be forced to
abandon the station? And was this a sample of Australia and its vaunted
bush life?'
'Things are not quite so bad generally,' laughed Pollie; 'though I
cannot deny that in these months, unless the weather changes, it will be
what you call a "blue look-out." Poor mother is more anxious every week,
and Mr. Gateward's face is becoming fixed in one expression, like that
of a bronze idol.'
'It hardly seems like a laughing matter,' said he gravely. 'The loss of
the labour of years, of a fortune, and then "Que faire?"'
'I am laughing in faith,' retorted Pollie; 'so that really I am in a
more religious frame of mind than all the solemn-faced people who
despair of God's goodness. Of course, it will rain some time or other.
It might even rain to-night, though it does not look the least like it.
Again, it might not rain for a year.'
'What a terribly incomprehensible state of matters to exist in!' said
Bertram. 'I little thought, when I grumbled at a rainy week in England,
what blessings in disguise I was undervaluing. And what would be the
case if a small deluge took place?'
'All the rivers would be in flood. A few shepherds and mail-men, poor
fellows! would be drowned, and the whole North-West country, say a
thousand miles square, would be one luxuriant prairie of grass nearly as
high as your head. Mr. Gateward would sing for joy as far as his musical
disabilities would permit him; and poor mother's bank account would be
nearly twenty thousand pounds on the right side within a few weeks.'
'And the sheep?'
'A few hundreds would die--the wet and cold would kill them, being weak.
All the rest would wax fat, and perhaps kick in a month.'
'Truly wonderful! I must take your word literally, but really I should
hardly believe any one else.'
'You may always believe me,' the girl said proudly, as she stood up and
faced him, with raised head and erect form, her bright blue eyes fixed
steadfastly upon his, and almost emitting a flash, it seemed to him,
from their steady glow. 'Promise me that every word I say shall be
accepted by you as the absolute, unalterable truth, or I shall speak to
you no more about my native land, or anything else.'
'I promise,' he said, taking her hand in his own and reverently bowing
over it; 'and now I am going for a long ride, to the outer well; I must
be off.'
'To Durbah, forty miles and more?' she said. 'Why did not you make an
earlier start? What are you going to ride?'
'Wongamong,' he said. 'He is a wonderful goer, and seems quieter than he
was.'
'He is a treacherous, bad-tempered brute,' she returned answer, rather
quickly, 'and nothing will ever make him quiet. Besides, I think there's
some break of weather coming on. The wind has changed for the third time
since sunrise, and the clouds are banking up fast to the west. We might
have a storm.'
'What fun!' said the Englishman; 'I should like it of all things. The
climate here does not seem to have energy enough for a right down good
storm.'
'You don't know what you are talking about,' she said; 'you haven't seen
a storm, or a flood, or a bush-fire, or anything. Take my advice and
ride a steady horse to-day. Something tells me you might want one.
Promise me that you will.'
There was an unusual earnestness in the girl's voice as she spoke, as,
placing her hand on his shoulder, she looked in his face. A low
muttering roll of thunder seemed to accentuate her appeal. The young man
smiled, as he answered, 'My dearest Pollie, I should be sorry to refuse
the slightest request so flatteringly in my interest: I will seek me a
charger practised in the _menage_ in place of the erratic Wongamong.'
In a few minutes more, as she stood by the open window, she saw him ride
through the outer gate on a dark bay horse, whose elastic stride and
powerful frame showed him to be one of those rare combinations of
strength, speed, and courage, of which the great Australian land holds
no inconsiderable number.
'Dear old Guardsman! I'm so glad that he took him. I didn't know that he
was in. I wonder what makes me so nervous to-day. It surely cannot be
going to _rain_, or is there an earthquake imminent? I believe in
presentiments, and if the day is like the others we have had this year,
I never shall do so again. There goes another clap of thunder!'
That morning was spent by Pollie Devereux, it must be confessed, in a
manner so aimless, so inconsistent with her mother's fixed principles on
the score of regular employment for young women, that it drew forth more
than one mild reproach from that kindly matron.
'My dear, I can't bear to see you going about from one room to another
without settling to anything. Can you not sit down to your work, or
practise, or go on with some historical reading, or your French, in
which Bertram says you are making such progress? You're wasting your
time sadly.'
'Mother!' said her daughter, facing round upon her with mock defiance,
'could you sit down to your work if there was going to be a shipwreck,
or a cyclone, or a great battle fought on the plain? Though, really, you
good old mother, I think you would, and thread your needle till the
Roundheads marched in at the outer gate, as they did in "The Lay of
Britomart," or took down the slip-rails, as it would be in our case. But
do you know, there is an electrical current in the air, I am sure, and
so I, being of a more excitable nature, do really feel so aroused and
excited, that I can't keep quiet. Something is going to happen.'
'Now, my dearest Pollie, are not you letting your imagination run away
with you? What can happen? There may be a little wind and rain--what the
shepherds call "a nice storm"--but nothing else, I fear.'
'"Something wicked this way comes,"' chanted Pollie, putting herself
into a dramatic attitude. 'See how dark it is growing! Look at the
lightning! Oh, dear, what a flash! And down comes the rain at last--in
earnest, too.'
'The rain will have to be very earnest, my dear,' said Mrs. Devereux,
'before poor Corindah feels the benefit of it--though that certainly is
a heavy shower. Early in the season too; this is only the 8th of
February. There is the lunch-bell. Come along, my dear. A little lunch
will do you good.'
'How wet poor Bertram will be!' said Pollie, pityingly. 'He said we
couldn't have storms here.'